I was just wondering if anyone with the Revell Fairlanes and Galaxies might be able to measure the wheelbase required for a donor chassis. My thoughts, the SCX Nascar chassis might be a close fit but I do not have any Revell bodies to measure them by. Thanks in advance!

Myself and the guys at St Andrews & Mt Annan raceways run the stock chassis with a couple of minor mods (about 10 minutes work) and they run great. They are certainly a challenge but good fun. I am running a black fantasy livery and it looks great. We have found that easy to drive can get to be boring at times.

Gort, Klaatu barada nikto.

My poor Krell!
After a million years of shining sanity...
they could hardly have understood what power was destroying them.

A few people racing these at my place have them going quite well with the stock chassis , they are lowered a fair way though .
The plate system that holds the front axle in with 4 screws is an easy adjustment to lower the front , just remove the screws and put the two spacer pieces ( not in the picture ) under the main front axle retaining piece this allows the front axle to raise up higher . Check your tyre clearance to the track though this car pictured has different wheels .
Lowering the back axle is a little harder and involves taking the axle and bearings out and doing a bit of file work on the chassis then glueing the rear axle bushings back in - setting the axle higher in the chassis .
The body posts are also shortened and reinforced with some styrene plastic , a lot depends on how low you want to go , this gold car has the interior floor section cut and raised a little as well so it can all sit lower on the chassis . its a bit of messing around so it depends on how keen you are to get the thing going well really
click the pictures to enlarge them a bit more
ps forgot to add the section under the chassis for the magnet has to be ground away so the chassis can drop , this chassis has some white styrene plastic glued over the area where the magnet was sitting.
pss found a pic of the interior floor that shows how much was trimmed away to allow it to sit lower in the chassis - cut off the floor , trim it out then re glue the floor in .
Also the rear parcel shelf area is trimmed for motor and tyre clearance .

I have made only very minor changes to my chassis, building on some of the ideas here but not taking them quite as far. For example, I have ground down the rear body mounts by around 10 thou, and sanded the bottom of the interior tray and parcel shelf in the problem areas (rear half of interior floor and the raised ridge on the parcel shelf) to enable the chassis to sit up higher in the body. Instead of using placing the two 'spacers' from the front axle box under the box I have just inserted a sheet of 10thou styrene under there cut to fit.

These combine to give a very subtle lowering effect (comparing it to the #34 Fairlane above my wheels are slightly higher in the body) and raise the front axle relative to the guide, which combined with the use of the Slot.It guide and braid will hopefully eliminate the problems of the stock system. I have also removed the rear magnet box (and magnets) and ground it down to clear the track.

This has resulted in a very standard looking car at first sight.

The only real change I am contemplating at the moment is to swap out the rear axle and spur for Slot.It and using BWA wheels with inserts. It already has a 6.5mm Slot.It pinion, which works well with the stock gear. I could perhaps try using a NSR 7112 or Slot.It 6.75mm pinion though if I went to a 18mm spur

regarding the rear axle swap on the stock revell chassis you may need a 7.5mm pinion - from memory the stock plastic revell spur gear has 37 teeth so something like a slot it or NSR 19mm spur gear may fall a bit short when it comes to the gears meshing / meeting nicely , as I said thats from memory I cant recall the stock spur gears size but its possibly a 20mm item ???

Pioneer chassis is the second from the left under the yellow body - click the image to enlarge it

Nice. I am a little too familiar with the Pioneer Charger chassis after putting one in my Carrera. It is a good chassis but it doesn't work out that cheap because Pioneer still don't sell the Charger chassis as a separate unit. I only did it because I got a Charger on sale at Thunderbirds.

Speaking of Pioneer chassis I managed to snap one of the front axle clips in my main Mustang for the race Thursday evening. Hopefully it will hold if I super glue the bushes in, but I might need to reinforce with something. I think I have some Slot.It reinforcing clips of some kind that came with a spacer set, they might help, otherwise it's the old standby of styrene card.

Some of my cars have so much styrene in them I should be sponsored by Evergreen!

P.S. I should add that besides the gears issue I don't see the Monogram chassis as being anywhere near as bad as the Carrera one. It just needs a few tweaks and it could benefit from some Slot.It or similar gears and axles. The wheels are also a bit iffy. I quite like the box front mount design, except for the problem of accessing the guides and wires, and I have a new appreciation of the robust design of the front axle assembly after this problem with my Mustang!

I managed to get a Pioneer chassis as a spare part , Surely T Birds should be able to get a chassis as a spare part if I can ?

yep the weak spot on the Pioneer chassis is the front axle retainers , I have use the black plastic "zip" ties as fixers for that area the zip tie material glues in very well with super glue and its stronger than the white Evergreen styrene plastic , once its glued in the repair can be shaped up to accept the Pioneer axle bush again .
Alternately do both sides of the chassis at the bush retaining points and then file in a rounded slot and glue in a styrene tube or better still leave the pieces of zip tie as flats and drill a small hole to suit a pair of brass eyelets that suit the 3/32 axle , I get the brass eyelets from the hobby shop that stock bits for model aircraft . Once the brass eyelets are in the front wheels usually spin better than the origonal plastic bushes.

If its needed - its also an ideal time to reset the front axle height when this repair comes due

Back to the monogram stock car chassis , they are not a bad chassis once theyr'e lowered and tuned in a bit . A few at my place including me have got them going quite well and when they are up against the other long wheelbase stock cars they are very competitive , the motors are better than the Scaley motors IMO .
At my place the Pioneers seem to rule the roost but only because theres more of them lined up to race and most are the Mustangs with a shorter wheelbase and generally they have a tad wider stance after the locals have done them up a bit .

Found this picture and a supplier of the eyelets - cant be sure of the inside measurement on these eyelets but the picture gives a better idea of what I mean above the measurement given on this site is 3mm which I would assume is the outside measurement not the inside ?

I managed to eventually glue the old bush in and brace everything and then once super glue got absolutely everywhere - I genuinely hate that stuff - it seems that I have managed to glue it in slightly crooked! If it affects the racing I will simply take the front tyres off and run it tripod on Thursday but it might need a new chassis.

After that debacle I immediately pulled down my Torino as I now I weakened one of those tabs by accident when I was doing all those chassis mods. Braced it up with a couple of lengths of styrene rectangular tubing from the Evergreen 'odds & ends' pack I got from Hobby Habit. It was a dear pack ($18) but there are a lot of little bits and pieces that come in handy. on the top tube I cut a groove to allow the wires to pass over more easily. Seems to be braced up pretty solid and hopefully between that and the two Carrera axles glued into the chassis it should be rock solid. I hope. I'm guessing it will take some bashing when it finally does run against other NASCARs. I have a teaching break coming up so I should be able to attend one of your Monday nights - I'm guessing though that you are not having one Easter Monday.

The tubing with brass eyelets sounds like a good fix. I just worry that I will glue it in crooked again

P.S. I don't think that Chris Osborne is dealing with Pioneer at all anymore. I can get another Mustang chassis from Pioneer direct via ebay if I need it, although at this point I'd probably just buy another car and strip the parts out of this one as the body is clapped. There was someone selling Charger chassis, I think it was Slot Car Corner, but their shipping charges are mental and I'm not sure why they had stock, maybe Pioneer did some deal. Pioneer have never offered them as a spare part with part number though

I bought five Pioneers from Chris - two Bullitt Mustangs (one for racing, one for the shelf), one #23 Mustang fastback (the one mentioned above with the broken chassis), one Bullitt Charger (lives on the shelf), and the Bengal Charger that became the donor chassis for the Torino all came from Thunderbird.

Most of his Pioneer business probably came from me! But yeah the Bullitt Charger was probably the last one he sold, and I got one of the Bullitt Mustangs and the Bengal Charger from him half price from his sale stock when he was getting out of them.

I think the main issue was really parts availability. That killed sales, from what he said. If other people had the same problem I've had with a couple of components - most notably the guide assembly - that might have been a factor. The guide is very idiosyncratic and thus I replaced it with Slot.It and B-NOVA parts that I bought from Thunderbird on one of my recent trips there on a Tuesday night after work.

Narh... All my Pioneers came from Chris too. Trouble is that there's a bit of a limitation on how many Mustangs most folks want. It's probably be a different story if the models were all flowing like they should've been by now.

Like so many other things, Charger chassis should probably be available as parts soon(ish).

Same pic from a wider angle, you can see here some of the tools used, mainly the Foredom H.8 flexshaft handpiece with sanding drum, Tamiya Handy Drill, some small files. A Tamiya Handy Router - very similar to the Handy Drill but with a router bit and different gearing - was used to grind away the wheel arches a little to clear the M10s when I first fitted those. The Foredom could have been used for that task if I had it then (the Foredom has pretty much replaced the Handy Router but the Handy Drill is still useful for drilling plastic at low speeds/torque).

Here you can see the magnets have been removed and the holes filled with styrene, also the round mount for the display base has been removed. You can also see here the modifications to the Slot.It wood guide if you have a keen eye. They were all done with the files and the H.8. The Handy Drill was used to open up the mount holes a little so that screws would not bind, and also to drill mount holes in the 10 thou styrene sheet placed between the chassis and the axle mount box, which you can just see as a bit of white up the front. Braid, eyelets etc are Slot.It